>> Apple finally got its chance to suceed and dominate but it to can't compete with Open OS environment for ever as has been shown to be true with Android overtaking IOS.

Android demonstrated the best model anyone can imagine when developing new ways of giving things away to profit. The innovation is iconic as Google used Android to weaken Apple and in the process is making lots of money through ads. It a far more superior model than what Linux did

>> Torvolis NEVER would have seen his masive innovation and added value if he DID NOT "give it away"

He is a great guy but yet to see him in the Bloomberg Billionaire Index or Forbes Global. You can give your idea away, anyone has that right. But that does not mean it is the best as Oracle, IBM etc build upon Linux and create wealth for others.

yes thats what MS failed at doing, Apple finally got its chance to suceed and dominate but it to can't compete with Open OS environment for ever as has been shown to be true with Android overtaking IOS.

Its the preverbeal dumb pipe syndrome, protect from becoming one by limiting choice...good for vertical market creation (good $s), but in the end when true choice or more choice is offered people will choose to leave the vertical silo.

your missing something or made a assumption that you are not aware of...

Torvolis NEVER would have seen his masive innovation and added value if he DID NOT "give it away"

The only other avenue would have been to sell out to MS, Oracle,IBM,,,

Not sure but he probably would have jumped off a bridge instead of that option.

Bless his soule connected mind)

Not all wealth or value is measured in $'s.

His legacy is consumer driven choice (complete freedom) of applications and not applications tethered to the mothership MS or die ecosystem of a past monopolistic software ecosystem/vertical protected ownership/enslavement.

And the fact that MS is not even relevent to the progress now happening with IOS and Android dominance should be answer enough for anyone wishing to look forward.

Application slavery to any OS does not allow true open advancement like happens in the open source reality playing out before us.

Its orders of magnitude kind of a thing that even MS knows it must at least appear to play fair in the new App sandbox of today.

They are just barely able to stay relevent with the innovations that are being rolled out.

Its not easy playing for keeps in a world of free for all solutions that what Torvolis created envisioned and allowed. It has now grown and has its own free for all momentum, organically creating what is needed one person, module at a time.

>> We may disagree on whether this is a good business model or not, but the fact that Red Hat typically trades higher than MS is for me proof the investor community agrees with me.

He is a nice young man but I know he does not own Red Hat. Also, the individual value of a stock is not the main deal, it is the total value of a company. It is about $300B vs. $60B. Linux gets his royalties and that works for him. But if I had his talent, I would have done it differently.

@goafrit if you look at Linux now and Linux when Linus "gave it away" you would see that the only thing he really gave away was the IDEA of a free (as in freedom) operating system. The amount of hours that IBM, Google, Nokia, SCO (yep even the much maligned SCO) and a countless swathe of others have contributed to Linux would pale almost into insignificance Linus's original offer. That is why Linux is so good, you get the finest minds in the industry all putting in their 2 bob's worth creating what is one of the creates OS's going. And why do they spend millions of man hours on a community project? because they see that they could never achieve it on their own (see OS2). Linus didn't give it away anyway, he sells rights to contribute and the contribution is his payment for what hw couldn't live long enough to do on his own.

Look at MS's business model, get engineers fresh out of uni with little experience and put them in a sweat shop that discourages innovation and spends most of their time thinking of how to screw the competition rather than how to build a great OS. They do this so there's little risk of windoze being "contaminated" by other people's source code but what they have is a unweilding dinosaur that has so many inefficiencies and security holes that it can't compete with Linux. I could write a whole article on the issues I've come across. I'm not surprised that MS's valuation is so low, it's past the point where any real innovation get in, it's now all about lock-in and forcing ugrades fo little or no value. There's no wonder there's a slump in PC sales, no one wants to buy a PC and end up with windows 8. For me I face a cost of around $20,000 if I downgrade to win8 by buying a new PC and all I get is one that is maybe 5% faster than the last one. It's cheaper to keep it alive for another 10 years.

At the end of the day the OS is an enabler that gives applications access to the HW and provides other services so that an application can see a constent interface largely independent of the machine it's running on. It's really the piece of SW that can benefit most from an open source approach.

We may disagree on whether this is a good business model or not, but the fact that Red Hat typically trades higher than MS is for me proof the investor community agrees with me.

>> I think Linux if it can settle on a mainstream distribution that almost everyone adopt will

Linux is not a good example. I do not understand why that young man gave that thing away. IBM makes money out of him, Google via Android makes money of him. All he does is give talks and no wealth for his family. He gave away one of the best tools of the 20th century away. I do not know why. Linux could have had 30% of the valuation of Windows (yes, Microsoft)

The challenge today is that when someone has many fences around a specific technology, users over time will look for an alternative. I do not simply believe that if other players improve and get to Apple quality that its closed nature will survice. More than anything, the reason Myspace failed with inability to allow 3rd party developers to build add-ons to it. So, advertisers, companies were forced to use Facebook

@zewde Yes they are difinitely running that risk, and the current state of affairs with Android overtaking iOS is a direct result of it I believe. Every case I can think of in history where someone has clsoed the doors it has gone really wrong for them. China is a good example although it took a while for it to happen, now they are opening up to their advantage. TI made computers that were closed and lost all of their share, Apple now, Hitachi Peach, Commodore Amiga, Atari? Only the IBM PC was open and is now the major player. I think Linux if it can settle on a mainstream distribution that almost everyone adopt will dominate over windoze in a few years and Apple's OSX will then also falter except for a few diehard supporters.